THE BYRONIC HERO IN CHILDE HAROLD'S
PILGRI~~GE,
THE FOUR TURKISH TALES,
MANFRED, AND DON JUAN
A Thesis
Presented to
the Faculty of the Department of English
Kansas State Teachers College
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
by
Retta Aleen
~andgren
August 1973
lV
University of
I~nsas,
and often took me there to work.
To my
beautiful mother, Mrs. Retta Binns, whom I lost in death
while I was writing this thesis, I owe more than I can ever
repay for her unflagging interest in this effort.
Out of
her small pittance, she insisted on buying me a pair of
reading glasses because I had been having some sight problems.
It is to her memory that I should like to dedicate this
thesis, not overlooking, by any means, the assistance I have
received from the members of the faculty at Kansas State
Teachers College in Emporia, Kansas.
Emporia, Kansas
August, 1973
R. A. S.
J.J.J.
of the poetry.
For details of the poet's life, Professor
Leslie Marchand's biography affords the writer \vith an in­
terpretation of the interweaving of Byron's personal idiosyn­
crasJ.es with his poetry.
For detailed commentary on different
aspects of Byron's philosophy, one finds the Keats-Shelley
Journal invaluable and representative of the finest current
opinions concerning the work of Byron.
In a complete and
exhaustive study, Robert Gleckner presents the modern trend
of thought in Byron and
~
Ruins Qf Paradise, and he
J.S
successful in separating Byron from his heroes, but the
present author is surprised to find that Gleckner considers
Don Juan as an immoral poem, after the fine analysis given
to his other works.
A more cheerful view of Byronism is
presented in Elizabeth Boyd's Byron's Don Juan.
One could
cite many other sources of inspiration for the study of the
Byronic hero, and he could cite the many anti-Byronic works
if he were concentrating on the personality of Lord Byron,
but it is necessary to select the authors who uphold the
thesis of separatism that is proferred.
The present author should also like to thank living
persons who have contributed assistance in the preparation of
this thesis.
Mr. Philip Tompkins, Director of Public Re­
lations at the University of Hissouri, Kansas City, allowed
me to use the fine library on the campus.
My niece, Joan
Binns, checked books out for my use from the library at the
PREFACE
When one begins a study of the Byronic hero, he is
instantly dismayed by the breadth of the subject and the
numerous sources from which Lord Byron borrowed for the
creation of his characters.
In order to understand fully
these sources, one is tempted to interrupt his study and to
read Goethe's Faust or The Sorrows of Young \ierther; Rousseau's
La Nouvelle d'Heloise; MacPherson's Ossian; Scott's Marmion
and The Lay of the Last Minstrel; Moore's Zeluco; and
abundant other literature of both Italian and English writers
of the eighteenth century.
Lacking time, however, one relies
on commentaries of the critics and a brief review of the
works cited, feeling rather dissatisfied at his twentieth
century understanding of the works of the authors of two
centuries ago.
Contemporary criticism of Byron's poetry 1n
the Edinburgh Review, edited by Francis Jeffrey, and the
Quarterly Review, edited by Sir Walter Scott, is,
unfortunatel~
incomplete in the scholarly analysis of the intricate back­
ground of the Byronic hero.
Modern works to which the present author is much in­
debted include Rowland E. Prothero's edition of the letters
and journals of Lord Byron and Ernest H. Coleridge's edition
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
PREFACE
1.1.
Chapter
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
CHILDE HAROLD I AND II
1
CHILDE HAROLD III
16
THE FOUR TURKISH TALES
)0
MANFRED
44
DON JUAN •
51!
CONCLUSION •
67
BIBLIOGRAPHY •
7/+
Chapter I
CHILDE HAROLD I AND II
Romantic Childe Harold marks the origin of the famous
Byronic hero, an epitome of the characteristics of the Gothic
villain, the hero of sensibility, the child of nature, Pro­
metheus, the Wandering Jew, Satan, Cain, and the Noble Out­
law.
l
Despite Byron's contention in the Preface to Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage that Childe Harold is a " .
tious character .
. ficti­
,,2
. the child of the imagination .
the pUblic immediately associated Byron with his gloomy hero,
and the anachronism of a medieval knight-in-waiting ven­
turing forth on a modern pilgrimage.
In an Addition to
~
Preface, written after the original pUblication of the poem
in 1812, Byron admits that Chi Ide Harold is "unknightly,"
but he defends his choice of this unchivalrous hero as
follows:
I now leave Childe Harold to live his day, such as he
is; it had been more agreeable and certainly more easy,
to have drawn an amiable character.
It had been easy to
Ipeter L. Thorslev, Jr., The Byronic Hero, p. 21.
2Lord Byron, Preface £2 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,
p. 1. Taken from Paul Elmer More, ed., The Complete Poetical
Works of ~ Byron.
SUbsequent references to Byron's poetry
are from this text, unless otherwise designated.
2
varnish over his faults, to make him do more and express
less, but he never was intended as an example, further
than to show that early perversion of mind and morals
leads to satiety of past pleasures and disappointment in
new ones, and that even the beauties of nature . . . are
lost on a soul so constituted, or rather misdirected.
Had I proceeded with this poem, this character would have
deepened as he drew to a close; for the outline which I
once meant to fill up for him was, with some exceptions,
the sketch of a modern Timon, perhaps a poetical
Zeluco. J
His public was never convinced, however, that Byron and Childe
Harold were not one and the same.
In a vehement denial con­
tained in a letter to his friend, R. C. Dallas, Byron writes,
II
• I would not be such a fellow as I have made my hero
for all the world. II4
An apt consideration, here, is that
Lord Byron had written and published Cantos I and II before
the time of his greatest disillusionment with English society,
and that he had regretted his hastiness in writing English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers, the biting satire composed in
anger before he took his first journey to the East. 5
Cantos
III and IV, written after his supposedly incestuous relation­
ship with Augusta, his disastrous marriage, and his voluntary
exile when his political career was ruined, move him much
closer to an affinity with his embittered hero, Childe Harold.
J Lord Byron, Addition to ~ Preface, p. 2.
4Rowland E. Prothero
(ed.), ~ Works of Lord Byron;
Letters and Journals, III, Letter to R. C. Dallas, October J1,
1811, 66.
5Wi11iam Calvert, Romantic Paradox, p. 106.
3
In his negative response to Nature and in his Satanic
pose as one sUffering from an unknown sin, Chi Ide Harold re­
sembles a Gothic villain.
However, his character is some­
what softened by the weltschmerz theme of Goethe's lferther,
a man of sensibility and feeling. 6
Like Werther, Childe
Harold is not cruel, and his agony stems from the loss of
love and from an inability to adjust to the realities of
life.
Instead of committing suicide as Werther did, Childe
Harold becomes a lonely wanderer, a cursed soul with a sense
of his own fatality.
Francis Jeffrey, whose opinion of
Childe Harold appears in the Edinburgh Review (1812), sums
up the qualities of the melancholy
hero~
Childe Harold is a sated e~icure--sickened with the
very fulness of prosperity--oppressed with ennui,
and stung with occasional remorse;--his heart hardened
by a long course of sensual indulgence, and his opinion
of mankind degraded by his acquaintance with the baser
part of them.
In this state he wanders over the
fairest and most interesting parts of Europe, in the
vain hope of stimulating his palsied sensibility by
novelty, or at least of occasionally forgetting his
mental anguish in the toils and perils of his journey.
Like Milton's fiend, however, he sees 'undelighted all
delight,' and passed on through the great wilderness of
the world with a heart shut to all human sympathy-­
sullenly despising the stir both of its business and
its pleasures--but hating and despising himself most
of all, for beholding it with so little emotion . 7
Jeffrey's analysis of Childe Harold is borne out by Byron's
other character in the poem, the narrator.
6Ernest Lovell, Record of .2. Quest, p. 139.
71"rancis Jeffrey, "Lord Byron's Childe Harold," Edin­
Burgh Review, XIX (March, 1812), 466-477.
4
In Canto I, Byron introduces the narrator, and because
he had virtually no experience in projecting a third person,
his hero, his narrator, and Lord Byron himself sometimes
intermingle their responses on the sights which they see on
the pilgrimage to Portugal, Spain, Albania, and Turkey.
The
narrator becomes the passive, reflective storyteller who re­
lates the actions and thoughts of Childe Harold, both the
active and passive participant on the journey.
Strangely
enough, Childe Harold seldom speaks, and, except for the
lyrics he sings, his character is mainly formed through the
impressions of the narrator.
Some intimate relationship
exists between the two men, jUdging from the narrator's }{now­
ledge of Childe Harold's background as a member of the
English nobility, perhaps the last of his line, who has com­
mitted some secret sin for which there is no forgiveness.
In the section of Albion, the narrator describes Childe Har­
old as "
Disporting there like any other fly •
,,8
In a vain endeavor to find oblivion from the shambles of his
life, Childe Harold is observed as one who gathers revelers
about him, but, more often than not, he withdraws into his
loneliness and "
(I.vi.52-5J)
. Apart he stalk'd in joyless •
II
As a profligate and bacchanalian reveler,
Childe Harold has become satiated with pleasure and longs for
p.
4.
line.
8Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, I.iii.29,
SUbsequent references in text by canto, verse, and
5
escape to other scenes where he can savor his gloom in soli­
tude, because" • • • With pleasure drugg'd he almost long'd
for woe, lAnd e'en for change of scene would seek the shades
below."
(I.vi.52-5J)
Childe Harold cannot love nor be
loved because his melancholy introspection, his secret guilt,
and his unrequited love, which have hardened his heart, will
not allow him to love.
The narrator, disapproving of the hero's revels, feels
some sympathy for the unhappy pilgrim who has left his home,
mother, sister, and native land without regret to "
traverse Paynim shores • • • • " (I.xi.99)
In the lyric,
"Good Night," Harold indicates his desolate condition l..rhen he
slngs " • • • And now I'm in the world alone, IUpon the wide,
l·/ide sea • • • • " (L.xiii.182-l8J)
In the last stanzas of
this song, he lvelcomes the l-{aves of the ocean, the soli tude
of the deserts and caves of isolation, where he is to lvander,
alone and friendless, as a stranger and a pilgrim in the
atmosphere of darkness and primitivism, away from a society
which has alienated him. 9
When the ship arrives in Lisbon, Childe Harold feels
brief delight with the beauty of the land from a distance.
HOlvever, the sight of some British warships in the harbor re­
mind him of the evils of the Penninsular War with Napoleon, a
war which has brought corruption and change to the once proud
9Leslie Harchand, Byron's Poetry, p. 40.
6
nation of Portugal.
Disenchanted in Lisbon, he has little
sympathy for the "dingy denizens" who live in dirt and filth
as "poor, paltry slaves."
He indicates the contrast of the
beauty of nature to the corruption of mankind when he asks:
"
• Why, Nature, waste thy wonders on such men? .
(L.xv.2J4)
"
Paradoxically, however, the Chi Ide Harold
himself finds little solace in the beauty of Cintra, marred
by the ruins of the palace of Beckford and by the sight of
the palace where the British, at the Convention of Cintra,
had afforded Napoleon's defeated forces a peaceful exit, an
act satirized by Byron. 10
Childe Harold, untouched by the
scenes of history, or by the landscape, is willing to go
his "solitary ,,,ay," and the narrator describes his restless­
ness and boredom in these lines:
Sweet was the scene, yet soon he thought to flee,
More restless than the swallow in the skies;
Though here awhile he learn'd to moralize
For meditation fix'd at times on him;
And conscious Reason whisper'd to despise
His early youth misspent in maddest whim;
But as he gaz'd on truth his aching eyes grew dim.
(I.xxvii.J97-40J)
The imperfection of mankind, the hardest reality for the
Romantics to face, has discouraged Childe Harold, and he can­
not stand to meditate upon Nature or the ruins of history as
he relates the downfall of society to his own fall from
10
.
George Roppen and R1chard Sommers, Strangers and
Pilgrims, p. 209.
7
grace.
11
. .
. .
pluch to the mora11z1ng narrator's d1sgust, Ch11de
~
Harold quits the scene of peace,
the soul,
II
II
• though soothing to
(I.xxvii.J2S), to fly onward to some
unknown destination in search of some changing scene which
may calm his troubled breast.
His perpetual flight from
his egocentric self prevents him from feeling any sympathy
with the plight of others, past or present, and his journey
becomes both an inward and outward one as he searches for some
.
.
.
12
mean1ng of h1s own eX1stence.
After a brief visit to Mafra and a journey on horse­
back across the Sierra Morena Mountains, the pilgrims cross
the Caia River to enter Spain.
Just as Chi Ide Harold's re­
actions to Cintra reveal his restless character, the
narrator's response to Spain and its romantic past now dis­
close varying moods which identify his own personality.
For
example, instead of scorn for the people of Spain, the
narrator is sympathetic with the proud peasants and rustic
shepherds of the hilly country, but he is perturbed because
they seem to live in ignorance to the threat of invasion by
Napoleon.
The narrator cries out to the Spaniards to awaken
from the glory and tradition of the past to defend their
country from the oncoming enemy.
The scenes of the
llErnest H. Coleridge (ed.), ~ Works of Lord Byron,
Poetry, II, 49; see Note I.
12George Roppen and Richard Sommers, Strangers ~
Pilgrims, p. 19.
8
battlefields at Talavera and Albuera awaken feelings of pride
because the English won bloody victories there.
The narrator,
like Childe Harold in this respect, reveals his hatred of
tyranny and his sense of the futility of war.
In Seville,
the narrator admires the beautiful Spanish women, super10r
1n his sight to English women.
Typical of Byron's style,
at this moment of the narrator's delight with the Andalusian
maids, Byron breaks in with an anachronistic address to Mt.
Parnassus, the home of Apollo.
Apologizing for his inter­
ruption of theme, the poet returns to the narrator and
Childe Harold in Cadiz, where they watch the bullfights.
The
narrator describes the sport in realistic detail, but he
is sickened to think that a nation, once proud and powerful,
had condescended to the empty honor of bullfighting, which
ends in the shedding of blood.
Then, Childe Harold, ,·/hose
II
•
•
•
wayward bosom was
unmoved, /For not yet had he drunk of Lethe's stream.
(I.lxxxii.8ll-8l2), draws apart in sinful revels because
he realizes that he cannot overcome his fate or find the
perfection he seeks.
The song, "To Inez," reveals his in­
consolable condition when he sings,
II
•••
Smile on, nor
venture to unmask /Man's heart and view the Hell that's
there." (I.lxxiv.87l-872)
He is doomed to wander earth's
II
9
face without finding love or self-knowledge.
The narrator,
too, begins to realize that imperfection exists in the world,
and he is saddened by the fall of Spain to Napoleon.
As he
moralizes about the ravages of war and the loss of freedom,
he feels more charitable towards the disillusioned Childe
Harold.
Byron realizes the growing bitterness and despondency
of the narrator, whose changing views about war and tyranny
have merited him the approval of the author as a fit
traveling companion for Childe Harold.
At the end of Canto
I, Byron's remarks are pertinent to this purpose:
Here is one fytte of Harold's pilgrimage;
Ye who of him may further seek to know,
Shall find some tidings in a future page
If he that rhymeth now may scribble moe.
Is this too much? stern Critic, say not SOl
Patience: and ye shall hear what he beheld
In other lands, lvhere he was doom'd to go:
Lands that contain the monuments of Eld,
Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous hands lvere quell'~
(I.xciii.945-95J)
This attention which Byron gives to his narrator as a char­
acter indicates a growing awareness that he has failed to
develop Childe Harold's personality as fully as he had 1n­
tended.
Chi Ide Harold represents the isolated Romantic
rebel, lvho seeks escape from himself and humanity, whereas
the narrator typifies the young, realistic, patriotic
Englishman who tours the Continent as a part of his education.
This separation of narrator and hero continues in Canto II,
in the Turkish Tales, and has a different treatment in Canto
III of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.
Eventually, this
10
hero-narrator technique leads to the successful manipulation
of both men in Don Juan.
In Canto II, Childe Harold gloomily wanders through
Athens, unimpressed by the sights he sees, but Byron digresses
1n a lamentation on the past glories of Greece and her heroes.
In a kind of dramatic monologue, he invokes Athena, the
Goddess of Wisdom, and an Oriental Son of the morning to
assist him in his search for self-knowledge, the object of his
pilgrimage.
The slcull which he finds that was once" •
The dome of Thought, the palace of the Soul
" (ILvi.lJ.9),
has moulded into nothingness, but it serves to remind him of
the ancient builders of Greece, a country now fallen and for­
gotten.
In addition, the ruins of the Acropolis remind Byron
of his own fallen state and of the emptiness of his own soul
away from the reality of his own world.
He ponders the
values of life, realizing its brevity and also discovering
that, from the decay of an ancient civilization, mankind has
built other societies to be destroyed by tyrants and by war.
After fifteen stanzas of such digression, the poet suddenly
remembers his hero and saysz
But where is Harold? shall I then forget
To urge the gloomy wanderer o'er the wave?
Little reck'd he of all that men regret;
No loved-one now in feign'd lament could rave;
No friend the parting hand extended gave,
But the cold stranger pass'd to other climes:
Hard is his heart when charms may not enslave;
But Harold felt not as in other time,
And left without a sigh the land of ,~ar and crimes.
(II.xvi.lJ6-144)
11
The "cold stranger" and "the gloomy wanderer" again bring the
personalities of the narrator and Childe Harold into focus-­
the narrator considers Harold much too frivolous to appre­
ciate the historical implications of decadent Greece, once
the cradle of thought which has influenced the world.
Hest­
less and bored, Harold is ready to be "urged over the wave."
Embarked on a British frigate from Cadiz to Albania,
Childe Harold again withdraws into his own melancholy
thoughts, but the narrator observes the "little liarlil{e
world within" the ship, with its guns, its rigid British
discipline, and its readiness for war.
In the night jour­
ney on the ocean, the use of the plural pronoun, "\ie,"
indicates that the poet, Byron, is speaking, as he meditates
sorrowfully about the past as the darkness deepens around
the ship, and the moonlight glances over the waves.
The loss
of love, the unfaithfulness of friends, and a nostalgia for
the happier days of boyhood overwhelm him momentarily, and
his melancholy is expressed in his soliloquy on the solacing
qualities of the wilder aspects of Nature--on the ocean, on
rocks, in deep forests, on mountain tops, where man has never
held dominion.
In this satisfying companionship with Nature,
Byron argues, he does not feel along, but in the cities in
"
• the crowd, the hum the shock of men,/ . • • To roam
along, the world's tired denizen • . • • " (II,xxvi.226-229),
is to experience real soli tude.
Perhaps \-li th the \ianderings
12
of Odysseus in mind, for the pilgrims are soon to pass Ithaca's
cape, Byron is incorporating the myth of the journey into
Harold's travels.
lJ
The actual sight of land breaks off his
mus1ngs, and the narrative returns to the narrator.
Childe Harold, who is impervious to the sights of
Ithaca,
tl
•
• Where sad Penelope o'erlooked the wave.
(II.xxix.Jl~J), or past Leucadia's cape,
"
the scene of Sappho's
suicidal leap, is chided by the narrator for feeling "no
common glow."
Obsessed with self, Childe Harold misses
the importance of these historical sites because he 1S re­
covering from an affair with a lady named Florence.
The
narrator, 'iho observes the degrading influences of passion
on the hero, mocks the frailty of human love.
Chi Ide Har­
old's "seeming marble heart" prevents his capability to love
or to emerge from his self introspection.
When the ship
arrives in Albania, Chi Ide Harold's loneliness, his dis­
regard of religion, and his lack of fear are summed up by the
narrator in these lines:
Now Harold felt himself at length alone,
And to Christian tongues a long adieu;
Now he adventured on a shore unknown,
Which all admire but many dread to view:
His breast was arm'd 'gainst fate, his wants were few;
Peril he sought not, but ne'er shrank to meet:
The scene was savage, but the scene was new:
This made the ceaseless toil of travel sweet,
Beat back keen winter's blast, and welcomed summer's heat.
(II.xliii.J79-J87)
lJRobert Gleckner, Byron and the Ruins of Paradise,
p. 19.
13
In the "ceaseless toil of travel" and in the nel'lneSS of the
scene, Childe Harold hopes for self-oblivion, or perhaps to
find himself in changing atmospheres.
In the next stanza,
his scoffing at the red cross or any symbol of religion was
equally as bitter as his reaction to Actium, " •
• where
once was lost /A world for woman, lovely, harmless thing:
" (II.xlvii.4l8-5l9)
From Prevesa, Chi Ide Harold
proceeds on horseback to meet Ali Pacha, the lawless ruler
of Albania.
Both repelled and attracted by the gentle
countenance of Ali Pacha, who has enlarged his domains by
bloody rule, Childe Harold soon tires of the luxurious sur­
roundings of the Moslem ruler.
With a band of trusty guards,
he penetrates the wilder regions of Albania, where he
received as a
welco~e
1S
guest among the savage Suliotes.
Sur­
prisingly, Childe Harold discovers that he can still feel
joy, but, as always, his joy is transient, and his gloom
settles over him consistently.
After a feast around the
night fires, the Albanians dance, fight, and sing in revelry.
Childe Harold's l'lithdrawal from the scene is described:
Chi Ide Harold at a little distance stood,
And viewed, but not displeased, the revelrie,
Nor hated harmless mirth, however rude:
In sooth, it was a vulgar sight to see
Their barbarous, yet their not indecent glee, • • •
(II.lxii.640-646)
The shrill scream of the savage war song, "Tambourgi," causes
Childe Harold to withdraw into his own protective shell
against reflections of the human situation, and he exits from
l4
the scene.
Byron, always omniscient in the poem, concludes
the canto with his reflections of the national humiliation
of Greece, whose shrines are "haunted, holy ground," regard­
less of the present state of this land he loves, and the
land which has made him a poet. l4
Returning to England
with his completely disillusioned pilgrim, Childe Harold,
Byron contemplates the transience of glory and fame and
realizes death as his reqwrd for his writing.
After he
loses his mother and friends in death, the poet emerges
fully as melancholy as Childe Harold, who has now become the
"wandering outlaw of his own dark mind." (III.iii.20)
Clearly, the outstanding characteristics of Childe
Harold are his remorse for unknown sins, his ceaseless search
for perfection in a world of reality, his melancholy intro­
spection which prevents him from finding self-knowledge, his
defiance of social and moral law, and his irreligion because
he rejects the immortality of the soul.
Although he is
marked with the curse of Cain and the wandering of the
fabled Hebrew, he has the admirable qualities of pride,
courage, and endurance, and he hates the tyranny of kings
and the enslavement of peoples.
However, he makes no real
contribution to society; and when he is on the verge of self­
discovery, he recedes into loneliness and dissipation and
49.
l4nowland E. Prothero (ed.), Letters and Journals, II,
15
creates his own hell on earth.
The narrator, who almost
usurps Childe Harold's function as the observer intended
to thread together the experiences of the journey, has made
the poem more realistic by his more normal and believable
responses to the journey, and his alternate condemnation
and approval of the hero serve to emphasize the true nature
of Childe Harold.
Chapter II
CHILDE HAROLD III
In Canto III of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the hero
reappears, but he must still coexist with his fellow traveler,
the narrator.
Lord Byron, despite his near solution to ego
projections in
!n&
Corsair, reverts to the dual hero-
narrator device that he projects in Cantos I and II.
Al­
though the opening lines, spo}{en in his own voice, dedicate
his thoughts to his daughter Ada (whom he was never to see
again), Byron welcomes the roll of the stormy ocean waves
\-lhich carries him away from England.
His storm metaphor,
here, emphasizes the stormy condition within his own soul,
and the first two cantos of Chi Ide Harold's Pilgrimage seem
almost prophetic in portraying his own human condition, so
similar to that of the earlier Chi Ide Harold.
feels driven into isolation as he says
I
"
•••
Now the poet
Still must I
on; for I am as a \-Ieek, /Flung from the rock on Ocean's
foam to sail /Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's
breath prevail." (III.ii.17-18)
All ties with the past are
broken, and the \-Iorld, \-Ihere he '-lill almost ceaselessly
wander, '-lill be his home, or, in Lord Byron I s case, his fate.
17
Added to his bitterness and melancholy suffering dur­
1ng the intervening four years between the first two cantos
and Canto III of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is true guilt
and remorse, the result of the incest with his half-sister,
Augusta.
In the third verse, the poet seizes upon the
theme of Childe Harold, "the wandering outlaw of his own
dark mind," the creation of his youth.
Doubting whether he
can write as he has written before, Byron desires to con­
tinue his "dreary strain," to wean him from his grief,
"
• so it fling IForgetfulness around me • . . it shall
seem ITo men, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme."
(III.iv.Jl-J6)
Without affectation, Byron can say that
he has" • . • grown aged in this world of woe . • • ,"
(III.vi.47)
Although Byron realizes the change in his own
personality as a result of the phantasy and flame of his own
dark thoughts, he seeks release from his own suffering when
he says
I
"Something too much of this; but now 'tis past,
lAnd the spell closes wi th its silent seal .
(III.viii.64-6S)
"
E. H. Coleridge interprets these lines
to mean that " . . • on the tale or spell of his own
tra~edy
1S set the seal of silence; but of Harold, the idealized
Byron, he once more takes up the parable."lS
Confusion marks the reappearance of Childe Harold,
however, when Byron endows him with identical qualities of
l5Ernest H. Coleridge, Poetic Works, II, 220.
18
suffering drawn from his own
life--~.B"
his exile, his
hopeless love, and his separation from society as a result
of marriage.
Coleridge, in the Introduction to Childe Harold's
• Byron was not Harold,
Pilgrimage, has remarked that" •
but Harold was an ideal Byron, the creature and avenger of
his pride, which haunted and pursued its presumptuous
" 16
creator to the bitter end.
The need, then, for
another commentator suggests the presence of a narrator other
than Byron, perhaps the narrator of the first two cantos.
Rutherford proposes that Childe Harold has usurped this role
and that there is no difference between the "I" of the
narrator and the new Childe Harold in Canto 111. 17
states, " •
Marchand
• Henceforth Harold was Byron, and his acknow­
ledged alter ego .
" 18
Robert Gleckner and Kenneth
Bruffee insist on the continuation of three characters, al­
though their interpretations of the three voices differ.
Gleckner notes the device of Byron, the narrator of the first
two cantos, and Childe Harold, with the eventual absorption
of the narrator by Byron. 19
Bruffee intimates that the three
distinct voices are those of a reflective narrator, the
l6Ernest H. Coleridge, Introduction to Chi Ide Harold's
Pilgrimage, Poetic Works, II, xiv.
l7AndrelY Hutherford, Byron: Ii Critical Study, p. 50.
l8Leslie Marchand, Byron's Poetry, p. 46.
p.
240.
19Robert Gleckner, Byron and the Ruins of Paradise,
-
--
-­
19
Childe, and a merging of the two personalities into an un­
typical Romantic "synthetic" hero, who moves through the
latter section of the poem until the reflective narrator
emerges again in the closing apostrophe to Ada. 20
Out of this welter of opinion, no definitive conclu­
s10n emerges as a basis for a total critical agreement about
the narrator of the poem, but the greatest weight of
evidence converges on the autobiographical nature of Canto
III, and the almost overwhelming conviction that Byron was
Harold, or Harold was Byron.
Despite Lord Byron's continued protests against the
identification of his hero with himself, none of the critics,
except Gleckner and Bruffee, attempts to prove the validity
of Byron's statements.
Since these two men have complemen­
tary views about the evolution of a kind of synthetic hero
in the poem, they offer solutions to the endless conjectures
about Byron's intentions might have been clarified.
Although
Gleckner insists on the presence of the narrator of the
earlier cantos, and Bruffee depicts the speaker as a "re­
flective narrator," newly created, both men agree that the
"1" in the poem is not necessarily Byron and that a narrator
creates both Childe Harold and himself.
The synthetic hero,
a fusion of the narrator with his character, becomes the
20Kenneth Bruffee, "The Synthetic Hero and the Nar­
rative Structure of Childe Harold III," Studies in English
Literature, VI, 669-678.
20
real hero of the poem, although the method of synthesis
differs with the two scholars.
In his study, Gleckner sustains the image of Canto III
as a continuation of Cantos I and II, and the gradual
absorption of the earlier narrator by Byron's poet (which
he sees as another created persona) after the description of
the ball on the eve of Napoleon's invasion of Brussels, and
the fusion of ChildeHarold with his poet-persona in the
. .
21
Rh1ne sect10n of the poem.
Bruffee, on the other hand,
tends to regard Canto III as a separate poem from the first
two cantos, and Bruffee's point of synthesis for the reflec­
tive narrator and Childe Harold is not found in the Rhine
section, but their unison is in the lightning and thunder of
a storm in the Alps.22
To draw a line between the "reflec­
tive narrator" of Bruffee and Gleckner's poet-persona would
be to draw a fine line, indeed, but for the sake of sim­
plicity, Bruffee's view is the one with which the present
author will work.
This conflict of opinion about Harold's identity is
caused by the description of Childe Harold during his fouryear sojourn in his native land between his final appearance
1n Canto II and his reappearance in Canto III.
In stanzas
21Robert Gleckner, Byron and the Ruins of Paradise,
pp. 237-246.
22 K enneth Bruffee, QQ.
.
~.,
p. 6 72.
21
eight through fifteen, the narrator recapitulates the woes
of Childe Harold during these intervening years, and in this
summary, transfers the actual sUfferings of Lord Byron to
Childe Harold.
The hero has altered in age and aspect with
the years, and his soul has been embittered by a failure
in marriage and by his inability to throw off the chains
which fetter him to his past.
Seeking escape in a crO\old of
men of his own kind, and with a fancied security of "guarded
coldness," Childe Harold has stood alone, ever searching
for reality that he can only find in Nature.
\lith the vain
hope that his heart can never grow old, Harold has been whirled
on into the vortex of " •
. . the
giddy circle, chasing
Time • • • " (III.xi.99), but neither this pleasure nor his
"nobler aim," his writing, has offered the solace he seeks,
but some recompense in desolation and the isolation of genius
may offer a new life to him.
The narrator, hOlolever, does not
judge Chi Ide Harold, but simply relates the attempt of Childe
Har&d's vindication of his failure:
But soon he knew himself the most unfit
Of men to herd with Man, with whom he held
Little in common;--untaught to submit
His thoughts to others, though his soul was quell'd
In youth by his own thoughts; still uncompell'd,
He would not yield dominion of his mind
To spirits against whom his own rebell'd;
Proud though in desolation; which could find
A life within itself, to breathe without mankind.
(III.xii.IOO-IOS)
~lankind,
rejected as dull and stupid, cannot understand true
genius, a theme Byron will emphasize later at Waterloo,
22
Clarens, Lausanne, and Ferney, but his only escape from
humanity is in Nature--the ocean, the desert, the caverns,
and the mountains.
From his retreats, Childe Harold has,
like the ancient Chaldeans, peopled the stars ,.
• with
beings bright lAs their own beams; and earth, and earthborn jars, lAnd human frail ties, ''lere forgotten qui te •
(III,xiv.119-l21)
"
Despite his frequent escapes to Nature,
and even beyond Nature in the metaphysics of the astronomy
and magic of the ancient Chaldean, Childe Harold cannot
sustain himself because " •
immortal •
• clay will sink IIts spark
(III.xiv.122-l2J) Childe Harold grows weary
of mankind's dwellings and seeks escape from his restless­
ness in a journey which will introduce him to clay images of
Napoleon, Marceau, Rosseau, Voltaire, and Gibbon, all Titanlike heroes who ignominiously fell from fame to clay.
Just
before Childe Harold's appearance at Waterloo, the narrator
almost grudgingly introduces him into the present pilgrimage:
Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again,
With nought of hope left, but with less of gloom;
The very knowledge that he lived in vain,
That all was over on this side the tomb,
Had made his Despair a smilingness assume,
Which, though 'T were wild,--as on the plundered wreck
When mariners would madly meet their doom
With draughts imtemperate on the sinking deck,-­ Did yet inspire a cheer which he forbore to check.
(III. xvi. lJ6-l41~)
Without hope or faith, then, but with less gloom, Childe
Harold wanders forth on his journey, determined to enjoy
his despair, just as sailors on a sinking ship drink
23
"draughts intemperate" before dying.
(This shipwreclc meta­
phor points tal'mrds the use of a more macabre image in
Don Juan).
In Canto IV, Byron refutes the philosophy of
the line "The very knm'lledge that he lived in vain," as a
personal tenet, a point favorable to his concept of the
separation of his hero from himself.
Another difference
betlVeen the poet and his hero is discovered in Byron's quest
to find "a being more intense" through his creations of the
mind, but Childe Harold has no hope "this side the tomb."
The lonely traveler theme survives, too, as Childe Harold
proceeds alone on his present journey to Waterloo, except for
his sUbjective counterpart, the narrator.
After Childe Harold has, thus, been alienated from
"the herd of common men," Byron, as his creator, seems
determined to plunge his hero into another vortex of time-­
a mingling of the present and the past in the life and death
of heroic characters, who, like Childe Harold, have "peopled
the earth" lVith visions.
These heroes have disintegrated to
clay, the common denominator of all humanity, whether they
fallon the battlefields as defending heroes or aspire to the
mountain tops and fall ignominiously as tyrants from the
heights of fame and glory.
This interpretation, enlarged
upon somewhat from Bruffee's analysis of Childe Harold's
deepening character in heroic situations, in no way negates
his vim'ls concerning a ne''l type of hero J evolving by a
2/+
merg1ng of the themes of heroic virtues in Byron's works.
Bruffee's solution and a key to the poem's divisions are, as
follows
I
In the course of the poem, the narrator winnows the possi­
bilities and selects a very few carefully defined and
limited characteristics as proper and essential to the new
hero. The three divisions of the central portion of the
poem bear this fact out. The first, the Napoleon section,
considers frustration and defeat of heroic character in
pUblic and private life. The second, the Rhine section,
considers inadequate fulfillment of heroic character in
public action and in love. Finally, the Alps section takes
up the matter most crucial in solving the poem's problem
the possibility of intellecaual and spiritual culmina­
tion of heroic character through an experience of the
sublime • • • ." 23
Childe Harold has been freed from the gloomy Gothic villainy
and the Satanic pose of the first t\yO cantos and from the
stance of the Noble Outlaws of the Turkish Tales.
His indif­
ference to Nature and to history has been replaced by his
identification of himself with them and with all suffering
humanity, whether a Manfred, a Cain, or a Prometheus.
His
change of heart begins at Waterloo, in the Napoleon section
of the poem.
Just as Harold emerges upon the battlefield at ifater­
100, the narrator unceremoniously cries, "Stop,--for thy
tread is on an Empire's dust IAn Earthquake's spoil is
sepulchred beloly:" (III.xvii.145-l46)
Childe Harold, thus
peremptorily dismissed, remains passive while the narrator
describes the ball at Brussels on the eve of Napoleon's
23Ibid., p. 674.
25
invasion.
The ensuing fright caused by the cannon's roar,
the death of the Brunswick chieftain, the tearful parting of
young lovers, and the mobilzation of troops who meet the
foe bravely but vainly, enforce the narrator's judgment of
Napoleon's downfall as "fit retribution" to a tyrant.
Be­
cause Napoleon has shattered man's dreams of liberty, he has
broken the heart of mankind, and the shattered mirror sym­
bolizes the death of both the past hope and the bright future
of liberty.
In his quest for fame, Napoleon has set himself
up as a God, scorning the thoughts of men who have made his
conquest possible; and his antithetical nature, his in­
ability to rule himself, has caused his downfall.
His aspects
of greatness in pUblic life are overshadowed by his pettiness
1n private life, and the narrator parallels Chi Ide Harold's
condition to that of Napoleon, who tried to stand alone in
humanity I
But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell,
And there hath been thy bane; there is a fire
And motion of the soul which will not dwell
In its own narrow being, but aspire
Beyond the fitting medium of desire;
And, but once, kindled, quenchless evermore,
Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire
Of aught but rest; a fever at the core,
Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore.
(III.xlii.J70-J78)
Childe Harold's "fever at the core," and his restless longing
for escape are his fatality, and the hell in his own heart
bears him onward in his flight, " •
ride to sink at last • •
• A storm whereon they
" (III. xliv. J89)
He can ascend
26
to the mountain top, but he must be prepared for the hatred
of men below if he succeeds.
Holding Chi Ide Harold in
abeyance in the Napoleon scene is part of the plan of the
elegiac romance, which Bruffee proposes as a model of Canto
III. 2L~
Bruffee, reviel'ls the structure of this type of ro­
mance wherein a narrator shares a similar experience with his
hero, and, when this event occurs, the narrator merges with
his created alter-ego.
Since Chi Ide Harold dislikes anything
military, the merger does not take place in the Napoleon
section, which remains a framework for the subjective per­
sonality of the narrator.
In the Rhine section, however, Chi Ide Harold suddenly
becomes the active participant in his delight in the beauty
and fruitfulness of the Rhine Valley, his interest in the
history of the castles of the robber barons, and his apos­
trophe to the Rhine River in regret for the battle fought
there.
The narrator, delighted with this response, begins to
move into Harold's sensibility.
When Chi Ide Harold takes a
leap into the past to remember his love, the narrator remarks
with definite approval:
And he had learn'd to love (I know not why,
For this in such as him seems strange of mood)
The helpless looks of blooming infancy,
Even in its earliest nurture; lvhat subdued,
To change like this, a mind so far imbued
24Kenneth Bruffee, "Elegiac Romance," College English,
XXXIV (January, 1971), 465-h76.
27
With scorn of man, it little boots to know;
But thus it was; and though in solitude
Samll power the nipp'd affections have to grow,
In him this glow'd when all beside had ceased to glow.
(III.liv.478-486)
Childe Harold has now betrayed his humanity, and the narrator
has almost succumbed to the merging of personalities.
After
Childe Harold pours out his love in the lyric, "The castled
Drags of Drachenfels," and praises the beauty of the Rhine
Valley in verse, the narrator lingers with him as he bids
adieu to the scene before him, and in the sublimity of the
storm in the Alps, the merger of the two is complete.
In the Alps section, Chi Ide Harold, whose vision has
been enlarged by this merging, enjoys the beauty of Lake
Leman, but the stillness reminds him that "
There is
too much of man here, to look through /\H th a fit mind the
might which I behold •
"(IILlxvii.648-649)
His lone­
liness is renewed when he thinks of man, and his flight must
be renewed, like that of the \ianderer, "\{hose bark drives on
and on, and anchor'd ne'er shall be •
." ( I I 1. 1xx • 670 )
He must be away from corrupt mankind so that, in the solitude
of Nature, he may find total absorption.
At Clarens, Childe
Harold revives memories of Rousseau, the apostle of love, who
had written La Nouvelle d'Heloise in this setting.
Childe
Harold praises Rousseau for his philosophy of the love of
ideal beauty.
However, his downfall has been in his enflamed
thoughts about liberty, equality, and fraternity, thoughts
28
that have resulted in the French Revolution, and the Childe
dismisses him as "phrensied by disease or ...oe," '-thich has
roused too much '-trath, and he has made himself a "fearful
monument" because the Hevolution has failed to establish
a new order, so hoped for by the Romanticists.
At Lausanne and Ferney, '-there t'-to other Titan-like
heroes have established retreats from the world, Childe
Harold thinks briefly about Voltaire and Gibbon, literary
giants who have also ascended to the mountain tops but who
have been dashed down by the fickleness or fieriness of
their natures.
So in Titan-like heroes, Childe Harold has
found no consolation, for in their do...nfall, he compares them
to himself, and his quest for self-renewal has failed.
\lith
this sense of desolation in his heart, Childe Harold can no
longer tolerate the world that has not afforded any hope,
and he can no longer sustain the narrator, who is set free
from the hero of the journey.
As the narrator's voice, too,
fades away, Byron stands alone on the mountain top looking
into Italy.
He has found some measure of peace in creating
Chi Ide Harold because he has learned to control his grief
by steeling his mind against the emotions of the heart.
1S
It
now Chi Ide Harold who is the lost soul because he cannot
accept the reality of the world as it is.
Despite his reversion to the gloom and melancholy at
the end of this canto, Childe Harold's character has deepened.
29
No longer a profligate and a reveler as he was before, he
1S no longer a portrait of a Gothic Villain or a Noble
Outlaw.
Momentarily, he has been able to lose his identity
in the beauty of Nature, and he has more interest 1n
history and in heroes, but as he investigates the rise and
fall of Titan-like men, he compares his own fall to theirs.
He is not able to rise above his human condition; conse­
quently, he emerges as a fallen, broken man.
All that 1S
learned about Chi Ide Harold in Canto IV is that he has
lived out his life near the ocean, where he has found some
peace in living.
Chapter III
THE FOUR TURKISH TALES
Encouraged by the success of the first two cantos of
Childe Harold, Byron continues with his fictitious heroes
in The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, and Lara.
The writing of these verse tales, set in the authentic
locales of Greece, Albania, and Turkey and based partly on
events from Byron's travels, serves him as an escape from his
entangled emotions and numerous affairs after his return to
England.
Beginning his narrative tales featuring near-
schizophrenic outlaws with The Giaour (1813), Byron ex­
plains that his poetry is " •
• the lava of the imagination
whose eruption prevents an earthquake •
..25
This flood
overflows into the fiery deeds of the Giaour, Selim, Conrad,
and Lara, who are men of action involved in open warfare
against a society that has exiled them, and their bloody
deeds of conquest, murder, and pillage of Turkish despots
mark them, partially, as extreme Gothic
v~llains
with a strong
similarity to Moore's Zeluco, Radcliffe's Schedoni, and
Scott's Marmion.
26
Like Chi Ide Harold, the outlaws have an
25Rowland E. Prothero (ed.), Letters and Journals, II~
Letter to Annabella, November, 1813, 405.
--­
26william Calvert, Byron: Romantic Paradox, p. 113.
31
1nner conflict between good and evil, and they retain the
Satanic pose of sinning, isolation, and deep remorse.
Northrop Frye sums up the basic similarities of the early
heroes as a mixture of Gothic and legendary figures,
Now if we look into Byron's tales and Childe Harold we
usually find as the central character an inscrutable fi­
gure with hollow cheeks and blazing eyes, wrapped in a
cloud of gloom, full of mysterious and undefined remorse,
an outcast from society, a wanderer of the race of Cain.
At times he suggests something demonic rather than human,
a Miltonic Satan or fallen angel • . • he is always
haughty and somber of demeanor; his glance is difficult
to meet; he will not brook questioning, although he him­
self questions all social standards . • . • 27
Despite their Satanic qualities, however, these pirates re­
tain Childe Harold's sensibility of feeling and emotion, but
they are not, like their predecessor, passive sufferers.
Satanism and Prometheanism are similar qualities in Byron's
thinking (until he meets Shelley), 28 and even his outlmis
can aspire to Promethean greatness, an open defiance of
tyranny through an endurance of suffering.
Bernard Black-
stone explores this possibility as he contrasts Childe
Harold and the outlaws:
Childe Harold is a hero on the move, the superficially
sophisticated Grand Tourist stripped of his pretenses
and pretensions by contact with reality, with ancient
cultures--and, in the last two cantos, with personal
suffering. The Giaour, the Corsair • . • were un­
sophisticated adventurers raised to heroic status by
courage, by passion, and by suffering again. 29
27Northrop Frye, Fables of Identity, p. 176.
28John Buxton, Byron and Shelley, The History of a
Friendship, p. 262.
---- ­
29Bernard Blackstone, Byron III, Social Satire, Drama,
and Epic, 12.
J2
From these observations in the narrative tales regarding the
character of the Byronic hero, several conclusions may be
drawn.
First, he has the courage to live his alienated life
on the outer fringes of society, where, by his own choice,
he becomes a law unto himself.
Secondly, his tragic flm'i
1S his susceptibility to extreme passion, either in his love
for a woman or in his motive for revenge on individuals or
on society.
Thirdly, his extraordinary passions, whether
stemming from illicit, forbidden love or from a desire for
revenge, lead to great suffering and death for both the
heroines and the heroes.
Strangely enough, and most important
to the development of this character, it is by his own death
or by a death situation that a Byronic hero learns something
about himself, and his greatest heroic status becomes evident
when he dies unabsolved for his S1ns.
His fall completed, this
hero, like Adam, has lost his earthly Paradise, and like
Cain, ''iill suffer eternally for his sins.
The Giaour, which Byron refers to as "a snake of a
poem, which has been lengthening its rattles each month, .. JO
has 407 lines in the first edition, but by its seventh edi­
tion, it has IJJ4 lines. Jl
Obviously, Byron l{eeps adding
to the poem, and some loss of coherency is the result of his
JORowland E. Prothero (ed.), Letters ~ Journals, II,
Letter to Murray, August, 181J, 252.
JIErnest H. Coleridge (ed.), Poetic l{orks, III, "Bio­
graphical Note on The Giaour," 78.
JJ
efforts.
Another cause for confusion in the tale is the
presence of four narrators--the ballad singer, the Turkish
fisherman, the Monk, and the Giaour (who confesses much about
his past in the final scene).
The ballad singer sets the
scene in Greece and occasionally enters the poem to comment
on the action or the state of mind of the hero.
The Turkish
fisherman, who is both an observer and participant in the
action, does not have all the facts, but he reports what he
sees and knows in a garbled fashion.
In a series of alter­
nate flashbacks and progression in the story, the fisherman
reports the appearance of the hated infidel (the Giaour)
into a Moslem land; the desolation of Hassan's hall after
his death; back to the drowning of Leila in a sack from his
own barge (he does not know it is Leila); the murder of
Hassan by the infidel; and the return of Hassan's bloody head
to his mother.
Six years later, the fisherman visits a mona­
stery, where he sees the Giaour, and he relates to the Monk
what he knows.
In turn, the Monk confides that he fears the
brooding, melancholy, irreverent inmate who has hallucinations
and talks with ghosts.
The Giaour finishes the tale with his
confession of love for Leila, and he feels remorse only for
her death, not for the murder of Hassan.
The Giaour adds to the accumulating characteristics of
the Byronic hero as set forth in the preceding discussion of
Childe Harold the qualities of passionate love for one woman,
Jh
a greater capacity for suffering and guilt, dauntless courage
in battle, a revenge motive which makes him murder his enemy,
and utter defiance of religious and civil law.
In the
Giaour's confession, he describes the nature of his love
four important ways.
~n
He compares his love to a lava flood
\ihich boils over like a volcano; he only knolis to obtain
possession of his loved one or die; he admits that his love
is imperfect, because love is intended as a light from
heaven, and he has loved unlawfully; and he confesses that
he is capable of the same act of murder for infidelity that
Hassan has committed.
J2
The Giaour's fiery guilt and remorse
are symbolized in the scorpion image that occurs in the
middle of the poem.
For example, the hero's guilt may take
the same path of destruction that a scorpion exhibits when
surrounded by foes or fire and thrusts its poisonous tail
into its brain and dies; and the ballad singer compares the
mind of the Giaour, rent by remorse, as "Unfit for earth, un­
doom'd for heaven, /Darkness above, despair beneath, /Around
it flame, liithin it death:" (:tG.4J6-4J8)
Childe Harold, who
feels guilt and remorse, does not have the destructive urge
that the Giaour has; moreover, the earlier hero is incapable
of such constant emotion or of murder.
The Giaour also leads
an outlaw band into battle, and Childe Harold is much too
passive to take such action.
Although Chi Ide Harold breaks
J2Lord Byron, The Giaour, 1100-1210, pp. J2l-J2J.
SUbsequent references referred to by TG and line.
)5
moral laws, it is inconceivable that he is capable of ignoring
the customs of the countries which he enters.
The Bride of Abydos, a more straightforward narrative,
J.s written, as Byron says, "All convulsions end with me in
rhyme, and to solace my midnights, I have scribbled another
Turkish story •
• to ,...ring my thoughts from reality, and
take refuge in imaginings, however horrible •
.,,))
At
first, the tale is intended to hinge on a theme of incest,
as Zuleika and Selim are supposedly brother and sister.
(Later, Byron changes his mind and makes them cousins,
probably because this theme came too close to his relation­
ship with Augusta).
The opposing tyrant in the tale is the
Giaffir, who has promised Zuleika's hand in marriage to an
old man, the Bey of Carasman.
Selim knows the Giaffir's
secret through Haroun, the eunuch who saves Selim from death
as a baby when Giaffir poisons Selim's father.
Selirn seeks
revenge, but he loves Zuleika and takes no action until he
finds that his love is returned.
Realizing that he must be­
come a man of action, Selim promises her that he will save
her from her fate of marriage to the Bey if she will meet
him at midnight in the grotto.
Stealing from her rooms as
Selim has instructed, Zuleika is rudely shaken when she enters
the cave filled ,...i th bloody arms and the spoils of war.
))Uowland E. Prothero (ed.), Letters and Journals, II,
Letter to Thomas Moore, November, 181), )21.
36
Selim, no longer the effeminate slave of the Giaffir, appears
quite frightening in his garb of a pirater
His robe of price \vas thrown aside,
His brow no high-crmvn'd turban bore,
But in its stead a shawl of red,
Wreathed lightly round, his temples wore.
That dagger, on whose hilt the gem
Were worthy of a diadem,
No longer glitter'd at his waist,
Where pistols unadorn'd were braced,
And from his belt a sabre s\vung,
And from his shoulders loosely hung
The cloak of white; the thin capote
That decks the wandering Candiote;
Beneath, his golden plated vest
Clung like a cuirass to his breast;
The greaves below his knees that wound
With silvery scales were sheathed and bound. 34
Zuleika, fearful of Selim, thinks he wants to kill her and
begs to be his slave.
Tenderly, he assures her of his love
and informs her of his true parentage, and he tells her that
they are free to marry.
Zuleika, like Niobe, turns to stone,
and, before she can reply, the Giaffir appears and slays
Selim in battle.
Zuleika dies of heartbreak, and Giaffir
1.S
left alone with his tyranny.
Selim, according to Thorslev, is the first fully
developed Noble Outlaw as shown through his apology for piracy
to Zuleika, his sense of authority, and his position as one
robbed of his inheritance by the murder of his father. 35
Only through tyranny can Selim win freedom, and he becomes a
34Lord Byron, The Bride of Abydos, Canto II, ix.131-146;
p. 330.
35peter L. Thorselv, Jr., The Byronic Hero, p. 155.
J7
tyrant like the Giaffir, but with much more reason.
Although
he is committed to action, he dies before his true character
can be revealed.
As a hero sensibility, he is like Childe
Harold; but when he becomes a Noble Outlaw, he changes into
a man of action.
It is in The Corsair
(1814) that the character of the
Byronic hero as a Noble Outlaw deepens.
Conrad is the fierce
chief of an outlaw band, and his word is obeyed without
question.
Based on the real life pirates, Jean LaFitte,J6
and Lambro Katzones (the Greek pirate Byron hears about in
his travels),J7 Conrad takes on an identity that 1S more
specific than that of the Giaour or Selim.
Like Childe
Harold, he withdraws into his own brooding thoughts and re­
ma1ns aloof from his men as a "man of loneliness and mystery."
He controls his men and himself by the power of his mind,
and no one dares question his private thoughts.
His psy­
chological portrait is finely drawn from his Olin inner dark
thoughts of hatred for mankind, and this hatred is transferred
to the outer aspects of his countenance.
His fiery glance,
lowered brow, and Satanic smile inspire awe in his men, yet
they trust him implicitly.
Even his love for Medora, the
only human being he loves, cannot sway him from his life of
J6Ernest H. Coleridge (ed.), Poetic Works, III; see
Note I, The Corsair, pp. 296-297.
J7liilliam Borst, Lord Byron's First Pilgrimage, p. 78.
J8
hatred and warfare.
Conrad has not been born to this life,
and his exile drives him forth to war with men, as the
narrator explainsl
Warped by the world in Disappointment's school,
In words too wise--in conduct there a fool;
Too firm to yield, and far too proud to stoop,
Doomed by his very virtues for a dupe,
He cursed those virtues as the cause of ill,
And not the traitors who betray'd him still •
Fear'~ shunn'd, belied, ere youth has lost her force,
He hated man too much to feel remorse. J8
His only soft spot is Medora, but he can turn his back on
her to enter another battle without a backward glance, and
he refuses to let her love unman him.
Ironically, it is his
love for her that does unman him in the fight against Seyd
Pacha.
The memory of Medora's sweetness causes him to free
the women of Seyd's harem, an act that betrays his humanity.
One of the women, Gulnare, frees Conrad at the price of his
honor.
When Conrad realizes that Gulnare has killed Seyd
Pacha in order to free him from the Seyd's order for 1m­
paIement, Conrad is no longer in control of his mind.
He
returns to his outlaw band, finally forgives Gulnare with
one chaste kiss and finds Medora dead.
He disappears from
the scene and "left a Corsair's name to other times, /Link'd
with one virtue and a thousand crimes." (TC.III.xxiv.6lS)
Like Cain, he becomes a wanderer trying to forget his past.
J8Lord Byron, 1b& Corsair, I.xi.252-259, p. J42.
SUbsequent references in text cited by canto, verse and line.
39
Conrad dominates this tale, and he is more vital and
intense than Childe Harold ever is.
His traits of leadership
and the control of his mind in the beginning of the story are
evidences of a maturing hero.
His hatred for mankind is
sincere, not merely a pose as it is with Childe Harold.
His
breakdown is complete with the death of Medora, and he, too,
becomes the "wandering outlaw of his min dark mind."
Lara, Byron says in the advertisement, is a sequel
to
~
Corsair.
Abandoning his life as a pirate, Conrad-
Lara returns to his home and a place in the decadent aristo­
cracy, perhaps in Spain.
The Lara who has left home in boy­
hood has changed, and his serfs see the furrowed brow that
speaks of passion past, pride, coldness of mien, a high
demeanour, a fearful glance, and a sarcastic levity of
tongue.
He mingles with his fellow peers, but does not share
their common pleasures.
Lara, the narrator says, has tried
"\{oman, the field the ocean, and all that gave /Promise of
gladness, peril of a grave."39
curse a "
His only recompense is to
• wither'd heart that would not break."
(Lara.1.130)
Far aways from his action as a pirate and bold adven­
turer, Lara becomes the extreme of the Gothic villain.
He
wanders through his castle at midnight, peering at his
39Lord Byron, Lara, I.xviii.117-118, p. 367. Subse­
quent references in text cited by oanto, verse and line.
L~O
ancestors' portraits on the wall and holding imaginary
conversations with them.
Bored with men, he turns to read­
ing and sometimes withdraws into his library for days.
He
hates Nature when he walks in his garden on beautiful moonlit
nights as it reminds him of former days and former loves.
On
one dark night of vigil when a ghost appears to him, he falls
into a faint.
Only
l~led
(Gulnare in the disguise of a
page) can comfort him, and from his broken words in a foreign
tongue, she realizes that he is reliving his life as a
pirate and that his desire to kill is still a strong force
lii thin him.
In stanzas seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen the
narrator attempts to answer the questions posed by those who
knew Lara, and, in essence, explains the romantic malady and
the nature of the Byronic heroes.
Lara has an antithetically
mixed nature, and he is alternately loved and feared.
He
1S
alternately gay and sad, and his smile often turns to a
sneer when he perceives any feeling of sentiment.
The nar­
rator tells much about Lara in the following linesl
There was in him a vital scorn of all;
As if the worst had fall'n which could befall,
He stood a stranger in this breathing world,
An erring spirit from another hurl'd;
A thing of dark imaginings, that shaped
By choice the perils he by chance escaped;
But 'scaped in vain, for in their memory yet
His mind would half exult and half regret.
(Lara.I.xviii.JIJ-J20)
41
He has a great capacity for love, but he has wasted his early
dreams of good and consumed his powers in fiery passion.
He
does not blame himself, as "He call'd on Nature's self to
share the shame, lAnd charged all faults upon the fleshly
form." (Lara.I.A~iii.JJ2-JJJ) The Byronic hero is always
trapped in bonds of clay, aspiring to greater things than
that of being a mortal.
Lara believes in fatality, despite
his deeds of his own will.
He is selfish but often does
some good deed, more out of pride than out of any humani­
tarian impulses, and this same pride leads him to a life of
crime.
Longing for death as an escape from his guilt, he
realizes that his madness is a conflict between heart and
mind which causes the suffering he endures.
All of these
qualities of Lara apply to each of the early Byronic heroes.
The remaining mystery in the tale is the death of
Ezzelin, who appears at a ball and threatens to reveal Lara's
true identity.
Ezzelin disappears and does not attend a
scheduled meeting between Lara and his peers, and Count Otho
suspects Lara of spiriting the challenger away.
However,
Kaled-Gulnare is also capable of murder, and the mystery of
who killed him is never made quite clear.
Lara dies on the
battlefield in an attempt to help the serfs escape from
bondage, but his motive is partly selfish as a means of
revenge against his peers.
Gulnare, whose identity as a
woman is revealed, dies of madness and heartbreak.
Byron is
42
investigating, in Lara, the rise and fall of a noble indivi­
dual meant for better things, but he cannot conquer his own
false nature.
Death is the only outlet for such a man; a
confession or absolution is out of the question.
Lara, as an extreme Gothic villain, again rises above
the passive Childe Harold, although he is much like him with
his noble lineage and his false nature that prevent him from
serving humanity.
Lara has learned the lesson that mankind
cannot live without romantic love in this world and his
lost Eden is irretrievable.
From his position as a god to
the serfs, he learns that one tyrant cannot replace another,
even through his actions may bring hope to suffering humanity.
As a forerunner to Manfred, therefore,
~
poses an
interesting study.
The
~
Turkish Tales end with
~,
and Byron has
accomplished his escape from reality by creating heroes who
live and die in magnificent struggles, even though they have
chosen a life of crime.
Like Childe Harold, the protagonists
are moody, melancholy outcasts, and they retain the dark
attitudes typical of the earlier hero's nature, but their
demonic acts lead to self-destruction or to the death of
their loved ones.
The Giaour dies heroically after failing
to live in that manner, but he asks no pardon for his sins.
Selim, dying with a look of love in his eyes for Zuleika,
has little time to learn much about himself.
Conrad disappears
4)
to become a wanderer after he realizes that his love for
Medora is the only true value of his life.
Gulnare flings
the cross away from the dying Lara, whose final action is
to point to the East where the Christian faith is abhorred.
Perhaps, in his final gesture, he wishes for a union with
the spirit of Medora.
Despite Byron's posturing heroics in the Turkish
Tales, however, Byron leaves on with the mingled emotions
of admiration, sorrow, and hope for a better world where
men can live in freedom without a constant battle against
tyranny.
His love of Greece and freedom is a touchstone
for all mankind who study the past in order to find a way to
a better future.
Chapter IV
MANFRED
Manfred, referred to by Byron as a three-act dramatic
monologue or drama "of a very wild, inexplicable, and
.
1 k·J.nd," 40 e 1 evates the ByronJ.c
. hero to hJ.s
.
metaphysJ.ca
greatest heights by means of a combination of characteristics
--Promethean defiance, Gothic remorse, and Faustian knowledge.
Although Byron has explored the possibilities of herois
aspiration to Promethean stature in his "antithetically
mix'd" historical heroes and in his fictional outlaw heroes
of the narrative tales, all have failed in the achievement
of utter freedom for themselves or for mankind.
Manfred can
also be viewed as a key to interpreting the drama as an
eclectic theological and philosophic treatment of man's eter­
· human
·1
na 1 strugg 1 e for a "way out" of hJ.s
dJ. emma. 41
Human frailties, a desire for earthly love, a motiva­
tion of revenge on society, or a lust to rule betray most
heroes into their own self-destruction, but Manfred has lost
40Rowland E. Prothero (ed.), Letters ~ Journals,
IV, letter to Murray, February 1817, p. 52.
4MarJ.a
1.
..
Hogan But 1 er, "An ExamJ.natJ.on
Byron ' s Re­
vision of Manfred, Act III,"Studies in Philology, LX
~ctober 1963), 62~
0
f
45
all desire for power and wants only oblivion from his un­
relenting remorse.
As he struggles with the cosmic forces
of the universe in his search for forgetfulness with no
desire for the past or the future, he is, as Maria Hogan
Butler explainsl
• interrupted by one genuine "free offer" in Chris­
tian humility, the Chamois Hunter's offer of brotherly
love and his plea to Manfred to repent and be saved.
Manfred, who has shut himself off from humanity, though
he is kindly toward the Chamois Hunter, is not able to
respond, but ~ursues his search through his own blind
means •
2
Although Manfred appreciates the simple kindness of the
Chamois Hunter, he rejects his offer and continues his
search for relief in other worlds.
Manfred has no enemies, no rage against mankind, and
has at least thought about using his power to benefit manl<ind.
This metamorphosis of the legendary raging Prometheus into
a more beneficient type is a result of Byron's long dis­
cuss10ns with the more idealistic Shelley, who shared Byron's
interest in the romantic heroes.
During his four-months'
stay near the Shelleys in Switzerland, Byron had been sti­
mulated by the long evenings of active conversation about
ghosts and Gothic villains with Shelley, Mary Godwin, Poli­
dori, and Claire Claremont.
In fact, each of them, except
Claire, promised to write a Gothic novel, but only Mary ever
achieved any lasting success with her novel, Frankenstein. 4J
42 Ib id., p. 629.
.
4?John Bu~ton, Byron and Shelley, The History of
Fr1endsh1p, p. 14.
~
46
Byron's enthusiasm for Coleridge's Christabel, parts of
which he recited to the group, had fired his interest 1n
witches and in the supernatural. 44
With this melange of
romantic heroes whirling about in his brain, he had written
the "Incantation" (later added to the first scene of Manfred)
as a separate poem, hinting at the existence of an " •
unfinished Witch Drama .
,,45
Although he is indebted
to Gothic tradition from which he borrows freely for his
drama, he also has his own personal guilt problem that
occasions his desire for relief from his own pent up emo­
.
46
t10ns.
Later, Matthew Lewis, author of the Gothic novel, The
~,
visited Diodati and orally repeated to Byron a trans­
lation of Geothe's Faust, which Byron later admits impressed
him. 47
All Byron needs is a setting and a purpose for his
drama, and the setting he finds in the wild, beautiful
scenery of the Alps, which he tours with Hobhouse in Septem­
ber of 1816, after Shelley's return to England.
The apparent
purpose 1n Manfred is the outpouring of Lord Byron's own
melancholy and bitterness when he discovers that his exile
44 1 b1d.,
.
p. 1 5.
45Ernest H. Coleridge, Poetic Works, IV, "Introduction
to Manfred," p. 79.
46Bertrand Evans, "Manfred's Remorse and Dramatic Tra­
dition," PMLA, LXII (September, 1947), 752.
47Ernest H. Coleridge, Poetic \iorks, IV, "Introduction
to Manfred," p. 80.
47
has, perhaps, become permanent, when all attempts at a possible
reconciliation with Lady Byron have failed.
Out of the depths
of hi; own humiliation and despair, something of Byron's
mood when he begins writing is expressed in a letter to
Augusta in late September.
He has just returned from his
tour of the Alps, but as he writes to his sister, his melan­
choly has increasedl
I am a lover of Nature and an admirer of Beauty.
I can
bear fatigue and welcome privation, and have seen some of
the noblest views in the world.
But in all this--the
recollections of bitterness, and more especially of
recent and more home desolation, which must accompany
me through life, have preyed on me here; and neither the
music of the Shepherd, the crashing of the Avalanche,
nor the torrent, the mountain, the Glacier, the Forest,
nor the Cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight
upon my heart, nor enabled me to lose my Olvn wretched
identity in the majesty, and the powe~~ and the Glory,
around, above, and beneath me . • • •
The first two acts of Manfred are written, as Rutherford notes,
lvhile Byron"s "
interest in the romantic hero was at its
height, and while his bitterness and melancholy were still
most acute •
,,49
Although Manfred bears a resemblance
to the dark, gloomy Gothic villain, he is also a courageous
hero who refuses to yield his mind to anyone.
lii thout the
stablizing influence of Shelley, whose encouragement and ad­
vice had led him to more mature self expression during the
summer, Byron returns to his former despondency.
Since
48Rowland E. Prothero, Letters and Journals, III,
letter to Augusta, September, 1816, pp:-)64-J65.
49Andrew Rutherford, Byron: A Critical Study, p. 79.
48
poetry has been to him a purging of self, he is able now, to
write a drama that purges his own feelings in those of a
hero set apart from himself.
Pafford notesl
The nature of Manfred's guilt and his suffering under
its burden, while undoubtedly a subject of intrinsic
importance and a matter of lurid attractiveness to those
intrigued by Byron's relations with Augusta Leigh, have
hardly the thematic importance of the abiding interest
in the resources, aspirations, and limitations of the
human mind . • . • 50
The conflict of mind and heart, so evident in the
battles against self in the lives of his early heroes, has
become a reality for Byron himself.
Like his heroes, he can
either succumb to the devastating effects of his own action,
or he can force his mind to overcome his own human condition.
Neither the blustering heroics of the physical men of action
nor the passive acceptance of fate by Childe Harold can solve
the problem of guilt's consequences on the human soul.
It
only remains for Byron to create a godlike hero in Manfred,
who at least by his own standards, does not fail to achieve
a solution to his guilty condition.
As contrasted to the
earlier heroes by Blackstone, only Manfred achieves the com­
plete control of the mind necessary for achieving ultimate
Promethean stature by the acceptance of his own guilt instead
of by blaming others.
As Blackstone says about the
hero~
Manfred is the perfected image of the Byronic hero,
Sardanapalus is almost an anti-hero.
In Manfred the
50Ward Pafford, "Byron and the Hind of Man," Studies
dn Romanticism, I, ~96l-l962h 109.
h9
sombre aspects incarnate in Childe Harold, the Giaour,
the Corsair, Lara, receive their apotheosist beyond
these prototypes he is guilt-ridden, darkly handsome,
contemptuous, autocratic, passionate, but also generous,
intellectual, and courageous • • • Manfred is no tourist
and no adventurer. He is a 'Childe' by birth, but a
Faust by intellect; he is at home in the wilderness as
the pirates were, but dominates and finally rejects it.
He accepts, as they do not, the burden of guilt,
.. 51
striving to incorporate it in his own "image •
The play does not reach Promethean heights, however, in the
first two acts, but only in the revision of the third act,
which Byron writes in Venice and revises in Rome after he
has solved his own problems, accepts his fate, and, in so
doing, finds a way out for both himself and for Manfred. 52
The way to Manfred's solution of his human condition
1S
not a simple one.
In the opening monologue of the play,
Manfred, alone in his Gothic castle at midnight, states
that he has lived in darkness "since that all nameless hour."
His sin has brought much sorrow, and sorrow is knowledge:
• Grief should be the instructor of the wise;
Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most,
Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth,
The Tree of Knowledge is not that of life • • . • 53
Death, the only answer to the hero's dilemma, offers a way
out, but fear of death makes him seek other alternatives to
find oblivion.
His knowledge of magic allows him to call up
5lBernard Blackstone, Byron Essay III,
Epic, and Drama, p. 12.
Social Satire,
52Butler, £P. cit., p. 630.
53Lord Byron, Manfred, 1.1.8-12.
in text by act, scene, and line.
SUbsequent references
50
three different sets of spirits to help him in his quest.
The first are those of the elements of the earth, air,
ocean, night, mountains, winds, and the star of his own
destiny.
When he asks them for forgetfulness or oblivion,
these spirits reply that they know nothing about death but
that they can offer him power and sway over kingdoms.
Man­
fred spurns their offer, and they tell him that he can die.
Angered by their mockery, he replies in Promethean defiance:
The mind, the Spirit, the Promethean spark,
The Lightning of my being is as bright,
Pervading, and far darting as your own,
And shall not yeild to yours, though cooped in clay: • •
(1. L 154-157)
Because Manfred has power over the spirits he has created,
he hears only the voices as they echo his own words and defies
them in their desire to gain control over him.
As a final
boon, he asks them to appear in some visible form, and the
Seventh Spirit appears in a beautiful female figure.
When
he tries to clasp her, she disappears, and he swoons.
The
curse of the "Incantation" is now changed over his body, and
a vial of poison from his own being is poured over his head,
cursing him to live forever.
In the second scene, Manfred has left his Gothic
castle, and, on the Mountain of the Jungfrau, he contemplates
the inefficacy of his magic, his desire to commit suicide,
his fear of death, and his failure to appreciate the visible
beauty of the world in which he finds no solace.
In the
51
following lines, he voices the desire of the Byronic heroes
to be more than mans
How beautiful is this visible world:
But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half deity, alike unfit
To sink or soar, with our mix'd essence make
A conflict of its elements, and breathe
The breath of degradation and of pride,
Contending with low wants and lofty will,
Till our mortality predominates,
And men are--what they name not to themselves,
And trust not to each other • . • • (II.ii.JOO-J08)
The tragedy of the "bonds of clay" which chain mankind to
humanity rather than to being all god, prevents his soaring
freely.
Despairing, Manfred tries to commit suicide but is
saved by the Chamois Hunter, whose human offer of friendship
1S undesirable to the man of high rank.
The second spirit he calls up is that of the Witch of
the Alps, the essence of ideal beauty.
From her, Manfred
asks only for a release from solitude; and the Witch listens
to his story, in which he almost reveals his secret.
only hints that he has loved one ,...ho ..
was like me 1n
lineaments--her eyes, IHer hair, her features •
(II.ii.l99-200)
He
It
He has loved her, and he has destroyed her,
he tells the Witch, who asks him if he has slain her with
his own hand.
Manfred replies, "Not with my hand, but
heart--which broke her heart; lIt gazed on mine, and
wither'd •
.. (ILii.2l2-2l5)
Chained to humanity by
his earthly love, Manfred seeks every possible escape; but,
52
when the Witch of the Alps offers help if he will swear
obedience to her will, he refuses, again, to subject himself
to another's will.
In the third scene, Manfred decides to call up the
evil spirits of Arimanes and the Destinies, who recognize
him as a "man of no common order" and his power as great
as their own; and when he refuses to kneel to Arimanes, the
Destinies know that they cannot enslave him.
As a final
request, Manfred desires to see the figure of Astarte, and
his wish is granted.
As he pleads for her forgiveness,
Astarte only answers,
"Manfred~
ills.
To-morrow ends thine earthly
IFarewell:" (II.iv.521-52J)
Manfred swoons away, and
the Spirit says, "He is convulsed--This is to be a mortal
lAnd seek the things beyond mortality • • • • " (ILiv.526-527)
Again, asserting his will, Manfred overcomes his torture,
composes himself, and prepares for his fateful death, and
he has reconciled his fear.
In the final scene of the play, an abbot comes to
reason with him to seek repentance and to live for the benefit
of mankind because he believes that Manfred is worth re­
demption.
In the first version of the drama, Byron had a
dishonest abbot who tried to sell Manfred salvation.
He
had this abbot spirited away to suffer at the top of the
mountain, and he allowed Manfred to die in his burning
~
53
cas tl e.
54
. .
.
But 1n creat1ng an abbot who 1S observant of
Manfred's finer qualities and a religious figure who 1S
sincerely concerned with the soul of the hero, he causes
the drama to end on a Promethean note.
Thus, Manfred defies
the spirits of good or evil, and, as he dies, he offers his
hand in humanity to the abbot, saying, "Old man,
'tis not so
difficult to die." (IILiv.411)
Knowledge, the key factor that enables Manfred to
accept the blame for his own sins, sets him above the Childe,
the Giaour, and Conrad-Lara, whose lives are motivated by
revenge on society or on individuals for their own personal
dilemmas.
Although Manfred retains his basic humanity by
means of his love for one woman and by his dream of an
earthly Paradise to be achieved through that love, it is
his positive acceptance of the burden of his own guilt,
rather than the negative motive of revenge, that enables him
to win control over the elements and die triumphant in the
assertion of his own free will.
This tragic triumph of man's
mind and will, defiant even to the point of death, is the
pervading theme of the poem.
Chapter V
DON JUAN
The sixteen completed cantos of ]Qn
~
which Byron
began in 1818, were written and published intermittently
with his dramas until the time of his death at Missolonghi
in 1824; and the fragment of the seventeenth canto, which he
actually took to Greece, was kept by John Gam Hobhouse for
many years before its pUblication. 55
After the first two
cantos were published (by Murray) anonymously in 1819, Byron
admitted that he had no plan for Don Juan, but he later
explained that he had intended to extend the poem in the
following manner:
• I meant to take him the tour of Europe, with a
proper mixture of siege, battle, and adventure, and to
make him finish as Anarchis Gloots in the French Revolu­
tion • • . I meant to have made him a Cavalier Servente
in Italy, and a cause for a divorce in England, and a
Sentimental 'Werther-faced" man in Germany, so as to
show the different ridicules of the society in each of
these countries, and to have displayed him gradually
gate and blase, as he grew older, as is natural.
But I
had not quite fixed whether to make him end in Hell, or
in an unhappy mar~iage, not knowing which would be the
severest • • • • 5
55 paul Elmer More (ed.), The Complete Poetical Works
Qf Lord Byron, See note in brackets, p. 996.
56Ro,~land E. Prothero, Letters ~ Journals, V, letter
to Murray, p. 20.
55
Unfortunately, Byron died before he accomplished Don Juan's
entire tour as had been proposed, but the unfinished quality
of the poem does not matter, because each episode, except
the final one with Don Juan in England, is complete in
itself.
Of far more importance to Byron is the proof that
he can write in the comic vein, creating the Byronic hero
anew 1n an ep1C satire, which, Hassler notes, juxtaposes the
rea! wor!d and the idea! world of mankind. 57
The com1C
digressive style of satire and commentary of Fielding, Sterne,
the Italian comic epic writers, the ottava rima verse of
Pulci, and of John Frere's Whistlecraft have been success­
fully used in Beppo, Byron's satire of Venetian life, which
serves as a model of humor for QQn Juan. 58
Byron has al­
ready abandoned the artificial rhetoric of his previous works
in favor of the aristocratic colloquial tone. 59
He resorts,
now, to a more positive statement of attitudes and ideas in
contrast to a more negative presentation, such as irony and
satire.
It has been said that "
• for highest distinction
in sa tire, he '-las too emotional and he lacked the subl tety
57Donald H. Hassler, "Harino Faliero, the Byronic
Hero, and Don Juan," Keats-Shelley Journal, XIV ('linter, 1965),
61.
58E • H. Coleridge, Poetic Works, VI, "Introduction to
Don Juan," xvi.
59Roland E. Bottrall, "Byron and the Colloquial Tra­
dition," Criterion, X (1929-1939), 204.
56
of wit and that shine in the eighteenth century masters whom
he revered.
,,60
His feelings sought romantic expression
In the first canto, Byron writes, "I want a hero: an
uncommon want, /When every month and year sends forth a
ne'... one .
,,61
This facetious remark immediately sets
the tone of a comic epic, and his cynical reasons for not
choosing as a subject a great national French or English
hero set the stage for his choice of one from the past.
Don
Juan Tenorio of Seville, a hero of infamous character, was
first depicted in Tirso de Holina's El Burlador de Seville,
and imitated in Delpini's pantomime, which Byron had seen
on the stage. 62
Fascinated by the evil portrayal of Don Juan,
Byron borrowed the name for his epic, but he revised the
character of the hero and brought him up-to-date in the modern
'...orld of 1790.
By placing him in the eighteenth century,
Byron reverts to the type of natural man discussed by Housseau,
to the type of picaresque heroes of both Fielding and Sterne,
and to the hero of Christoph Weiland's Agathon. 63
By a pro­
cess of selection of more human characteristics, he rejects
60G• R. Elliott, "Byron and the Comic Spirit," PHLA,
XXXIX (1924), 900.
61Lord Byron, Don Juan, 1.1.747.
1n text by canto verse and line.
Subsequent references
62Ernest H. Coleridge, Poetic Horks, VI, "Introduction
to Don Juan," xvi.
63Elizabeth Boyd, Byron's QQn Juan, p. 60.
57
the basically evil nature of the real Don Juan and creates,
instead, a hero, played upon by fate, or as Guy Steffan
describes himl
• a natural man, whose illusions and impulses are
sound and normal, or because he is an ideal. The mean
and sordid things which happen to him are real and in an
ordinary physical sense, but they cannot corrupt or
destroy his spirit. He participates in many of the
vices and abuses of society, and although he is not often
an unwilling sinner, he is never a self-tormented one,
never defiled or contaminated, and never really
guilty.
_64
Since Don Juan is natural, he is stirred, therefore, by
human passion, and to his spiritual makeup Byron has added
the physical experiences of love, sometimes ideal and some­
times corrupt.
Because he faces life squarely in the world
as he finds it, always with the wonder and surprise of a
neophyte, he has no reason for the feelings of guilt or re­
morse which characterize the typical Byronic heroes.
Al­
though he is a wanderer and an exile like Childe Harold and
the outlaw heroes, he travels for experience rather than for
an opportunity to escape from society.
In fact, he welcomes
the companionship of many kinds of men and women, whether in
a longboat, in a Turkish harem, or in the courts of royalty.
Don Juan's acceptance of his fate and his sense of humor
enable him stoically to endure or to laugh at his predica­
ments, even when his illusions are shattered by reality.
though he escapes the melancholy aspects of the romantic
64 Guy Steffan, The Making £f ~ Masterpiece, I, 280.
Al­
58
heroes, he is "Byronized" by the autobiographical events of
Byron's Olin life and experiences in English society, in his
love affairs, and in his travels to Spain, Greece, and
Italy.
Byron's role in the poem is that of the aging narrator
who relates, in his superb conversational tone, Don Juan's
ep1C and interesting adventures in love, tempest, travel,
war, and society.
Simultaneously, Byron is looking back
upon his own life so that his comments and digressions
sometimes personalize the narrative of his hero, and he
occasionally chastises Don Juan for his actions.
It is in­
teresting to note that Don Juan begins his journey in Spain,
travels from Greece to Russia and England, and that Byron
reverses the order by beginning his observations in Italy,
regresses to Greece and Spain, imagines the journey to Russia,
and the two men meet in England.
Since Byron's digressions
from the narrative are primarily used for purposes of satire,
the present author will attempt to adhere to the narrative
of Don Juan and the developing of heroic qualities.
In Canto I, Don Juan is the victim of two unhappy
marr1ages.
His parents, Don Jose and Donna Inez, quarrel
and separate when she accuses her husband of infidelity and
madness.
Conveniently, Don Jose dies, and Donna Inez is made
the sole guardian of Don Juan's education.
She is determined
that Don Juan shall have no knowledge of the reality of the
59
world, and she has his literature expurgated of any references
to sex.
To insure further his insularity from the evil ways
of life is assured as
II
•••
half his days were pass'd at
church, the other /Between his tutors, his confessor, and
mother.
1I
(I.xlix.J91-J92)
At sixteen, Don Juan becomes
involved in his first love affair with another unhappy wife,
Donna Julia, who is married to a man twice her age.
Grad­
ually seduced by this older woman, Don Juan is eventually
discovered by Alfonso, the jealous husband.
Escapting from
underneath the covers of Donna Julia's bed, Don Juan runs
naked through the night, stripped also of his illusions
about the sanctity of marriage and the faithfulness of women.
He is sent away from home by his mother on a sea voyage; he
swears undying love for Donna Julia; he becomes seasick and
purges himself of his romantic feelings.
There is more stripping away of Juan's thoughts of
II
man the wonderful
ll
in the second Canto ''''hen the Trinidada,
Juan's ship, founders in a storm.
As the masts of the ship
are torn away and the men know that death is imminent, only
Don Juan remains courageous.
With pistols drawn, he chal­
lenges the men when they try to invade the spirit room and
tells them to die like men.
Pedrillo, Juan's tutor, and some
of the crew escape in a longboat and a cutter with only a
few provisions aboard, but the cutter soon sinks in the
stormy ocean.
After eight days on the ocean, the men turn
60
inhuman, eat Don Juan's dog, and cast lots to choose a victim
to cannibalize, and Pedrillo draws the unfortunate ballot,
torn from a piece of Julia's final letter to Juan.
Stoically,
Juan refuses to eat his tutor's body as he watches the aw­
ful consequences of the crew's hunger:
For they, who were most ravenous in the act,
Went raging mad--Lord: how they did blaspheme:
And foam and roll, with strange convulsions rack'd,
Drinking salt-water like a mountain-stream,
Tearing, and grinning, howling, screeching, swearing,
And with hyaena-laughter, died despairing.
(II.lxxix.627-6J2)
Don Juan has now observed mankind pushed to the extremes of
reality, and the picture is grim, but Patricia Ball explains
the purpose of this scene when she writesl
. • • • Byron's recognition of the grotesque element 1n
human behavior as an inescapable characteristic of the
breed is the beginning of his advance to the comic vision.
At this moment in Don Juan, he removes from human beings
the possibility of tragedy, saying in effect that the
unflinching self-mastery and self-confidence which
tragedy demands is beyond us. We break down, because
we feel hungry; where we should be superb, we are
grotesque • • • • To denote the tragic in favour of the
grotesque in this way is to lift the onus of nobility,
thereby conferring a freedom on man even while it denies
the human right to pride.
Byron talces his discovery
as a gift not an insult; this is the crucial factor. And
after viewing the spectacle at this naked extreme he is
able to write the rest of Don Juan which concerns the
'world exactly as it goes' day by day, as one accepting
and exploiting, not ~ejecting, the compound creation
which man is • • . • 5
Behind the grim humor of the scene, Byron's purpose seems to
be the education of Don Juan, who has viewed "man the
,~onderful"
65Patricia Ball, "Byronic Reorientation," Twentieth
Century, XLXVIII (October, 1960), JJJ.
61
1n reality, as opposed to the romantic dreams of his youth.
By his acceptance of the fall from civilized behavior to
primitive savagery by his fellow shipmates, Don Juan re­
mains innocent and worthy of survival.
Purged of his
youthful mistakes by the violence of the shipwreck, Don
Juan is ready to meet Haidee.
Washed ashore on a beautiful Aegean island, Don Juan
encounters Haidee, the child of nature, who has been
shielded by her pirate father, Lambro.
Haidee discovers him
on the beach, hides him in a cave, nurses, feeds, and clothes
him, and falls in love with this young stranger she has
befriended.
Don Juan is, again, passively seduced when
Lambro leaves the island, and Haidee is left to spend her
time with her lover.
Haidee, who is innocent, " • . . spoke
not of scruples, ask'd no vows, INor offer'd any; she had
never heard IOf plight and promises to be a spouse .
(1I.15l3-l5l5)
"
Content to love and to be loved, Juan and
Haidee consummate their love at twilight when the earth and
sky seem to blend together, and they are married with stars
acting as nuptial torches and the ocean as their witness.
This transcendent quality of their love, as they unite with
Nature in the evening when the world seems at peace and
harmony with mankind, as Beaty explains, obliterates the
individual as in a religious sacrifice and human passion
62
become the analogue of love for GOd. 66
Although he 1S no
part of Don Juan's paradisical dream, Byron's sense of S1n
inaugurates a long comment on the sinfulness of love after
its consummation.
"
Temporarily, Don Juan and Haidee are
• happy in the illicit /Indulgence of their innocent
desires •
(III.xiii.87-98), but their love is threatened
by the return of Lambro.
After Haidee hears a false rumor
that Lambro is dead, she continues her idyll with Don Juan
in the luxurious palace that her pirate father has built on
the island.
Lambro returns, and although he is usually
tender and gentle \'1i th Haidee, he becomes cruel when he dis­
covers that he has been replaced in his home.
In the en­
suing battle between Lambro and Don Juan, the latter escapes
with a wound and is placed on a slave ship bound for Con­
stantinople.
Don Juan never discovers that Haidee dies
with his unborn child, "a fair and sinless child of sin."
As Elizabeth Boyd points out, "The fatal ending of the
Haidee episode, brought about by the extravagant passions
of all three actors •
. is Byron's comment on the fra­
gility of love in an unnatural world.
" 67
On board the slave ship for Constantinople, Don Juan
meets the Englishman, Johnson, who is later to be his
66Frederick L. Beaty, "Byron's Concept of Ideal Love,"
Keats-Shelley Journal, XII (\Hnter, 196J), 45.
67Elizabeth Boyd, Byron's Don Juan, d Critical Study,
p. 67.
63
compan10n 1n the siege of Ismail, but, first, they are taken
to the court of the Sultana and Gulbeyaz as slaves.
In a
farcical scene, Don Juan dresses as a woman when Baba
threatens to circumcise him, and he is presented, not to the
Byron's main purpose here, as
Sultan, but to Gulbeyaz.
Steffan notes, is to
II
• let the pUblic peek into the
•
royal boudoir to disenchant the lofty and splendid luxury
68
of power and rank •
The Sultan is a despot who
owns his harem of women and has powerful sway in his country,
and Gulbeyaz, as his present favorite, is despotic when she
tries to force Don Juan's love.
The hero defends his rights
to bestow his love where he chosses, but he almost weakens
when Gulbeyaz cries.
After a farcical scene in the harem
with Dudu, Don Juan escapes along with Johnson and some of
the harem women, although Byron never explains how Baba
accomplishes this feat.
This episode reveals the sensibility
of Don Juan in his pity for Gulbeyaz's tears, but it also
adds to his hatred of despotism of any kind, even in matters
of love.
After Don Juan has, thus, been exploited by hypo­
critical love, despotic love, and transcedent love, he
emerges on the battlefield in the Siege of Ismail, a war
between Russia and Turkey.
Byron's specific purpose in this
canto, as Cooke explains it, is the followings
68 GUY Steffan, The Making of ~ Masterpiece, I, 279.
64
But it is left for Don Juan, in the cantos devoted to
the Siege of Ismail, to make Byron's most complete and
profound statement of counter-heroic principles, specifi­
cally deflating the hero of mere power, specifically
celebrating the life of courage and virtue • • . • 69
Suwarrow, the Russian commander of the troops, is the hero
in action as he drills, surveys, orders, and jests with his
men, obtaining the greatest efforts from them.
1.S
But he
deflated when Byron describes him' "A thing to wonder
at beyond most wondering; /Hero, buffoon, half-demon, halfdirt,
" (VII,lv.4J5-4J6)
Don Juan is tempted by the
glories of war, but, unlike Johnson, he knows little of the
virtues of battle; and he does foolhardy things for which
he is chastized by Johnson, who is neither a hero or a
coward, and he knows when to retreat.
In the counter heroism
of the Tartar Khan, however, lies the contrast among Suwarrow,
Johnson, and soldiers who turn war into glorified murder.
The old man, Tartar Khan, represents a struggle for freedom
against tyrants like SU\'iarrow, and Byron approves of true
heroism in a battle against despotism.
Don Juan displays
his waning interest in the war when he sees the old man die.
When he rescues Leila, who is left alone and defenseless in
the ravages of war, he never realizes that his human impulses
are counter to the heroism of war and the intoxication of
battle.
Byron lances his hero for his part in the battle
69Michael G. Cooke, "The Limits of Skepticism: The
Byronic Affirmation," Keats-Shelley Journal, XVII (1968), 102.
65
and further deflates Suwarrow, who writes a poem to Catherine,
informing her of his success in Ismail.
Resplendent in his military uniform and celebrated as
a soldier hero, Don Juan dazzles the women of Catherine's
court, \ihere he is sent by Suwarrow with his poetic dispatch.
The aging Catherine takes Don Juan as her lover, and he
enjoys the luxuries and pomp which his position affords him.
Eventually sickened by his own corruption and his selfish
love, Don Juan becomes ill.
The doctor orders him to go to
a more agreeable climate, and Catherine reluctantly parts
with him and makes him an envoy to England.
Tal~ing
his
adopted orphan girl with him, Don Juan travels in splendor
and is accepted into English society.
There he meets Lady
Adeline and Lord Henry, whose marriage is congenical but
cold, and there is a strong hint that Adeline will fall 1n
love with Don Juan.
She is jealous of his interest in
Aurora Raby, who reminds Don Juan of Haidee in her 1nnocence
and youth.
In the meantime, Lady Adeline pretends to be a
matchmaker and tries to find the hero a suitable wife.
Sur­
prisingly enough, Don Juan, now twenty-one, has grown more
sophisticated, and he amazes his English peers with his
abilities to ride a horse, hunt a fox, dance a graceful waltz,
and converse with intelligence.
Another dowager, the
Duchess Fitz-Fulke, tries to seduce Don Juan by masquerading
as a ghost that haunts Norman Abbey, the country home of
66
Lord Henry.
In Canto XVII, one receives the feeling that
Don Juan has resisted her advances and perhaps he is maturing
in sexual matters as well as in his other social graces.
Although Don Juan is much like Childe Harold in
some aspects, he is not a typical romantic hero.
He is of
noble birth, but his education has been one of limited
tutoring in the eighteenth century manner.
Don Juan differs
from Childe Harold, too, as he is not the brooding solitary
who seeks escape from the world, and Don Juan lives in the
world as he finds it.
Although he commits himself to no
life of responsibility, he finds life worth living.
Don
Juan is natural, sincere, and basically honest; but his
worst fault is his lack of self control in sexual matters,
and he may be beginning to be wiser in his choices.
As
Bostetter says, "He is the hero as he might be after success­
ful psychoanalytic treatment •
,,70
If he has any
faults, Byron tends to blame them on a corrupt society that
preys on the innocent, the young, and the good and turns
him from the right paths of conduct.
7 0B • E. Bostetter (ed.), Byron, Selected Poetry and
Letters, "Introduction," p. xvii.
Chapter VI
CONCLUSION
Byron writes at a unique time of both historical and
literary significance as he creates his hero and becomes a
representative of both the past and the present in his
poetry.
As Byron interweaves eighteenth century sensibility
and reason with the strong emphasis of individualism and
personal freedom of the more emotional Romantic Age, he
creates a highly original hero.
Byron admits that he has
borrowed ideas from the novels and poetry of the eighteenth
century, and he usually gives credit to the authors he has
imitated.
In one of the entries in his diary, he notes
that he has been compared, either "personally or poetically,"
to Shakespeare, Goethe, Scott, Young, Rousseau, Alfieri,
and Burns, to name a few. 7l
That he is well versed in
Shakespeare but considers him inferior to Pope is evident 1n
his conversations with Lady Blessington, who has visited him
in Italy.7 2
Many of the epigraphs of his poetry are tal(en
from Shakespeare's plays, and The Bride of Abydos is weakly
71Rowland, E. Prothero (ed.), Letters and Journals,
V, "DetCiched Thoughts," p. 406.
72Ernest E. Lovell, Jr. (ed.), L d Y Blessington's
Conversations of Lord Byron. pp. 203-20 •
4
68
patterned after Hamlet.
Like Goethe and Rousseau, Byron
endows his heroes with the emotional responses of the heart
which overcomes their judgment and reason, and death often
seems the only solution to their woes.
Edward Young's
melancholy persona who meditates among the tombs, relishing
his gloom in "Night Thoughts,,,7J begins what Willie Sypher
calls an "inverted sensibility" which leads to the Gothicism
of the late eighteenth century.74
Scott, Byron's friend
and contemporary, has immortalized the Gothic villain and
the ballad outlaw heroes in his narrative verse tales, and
Byron adapts both the style and characterizations to his
early heroes.
Alfieri is an Italian poet Byron admires for
his satires and tragedies, and Pope, as his master of
satire, has been discussed in preceding chapters.
Both
men are important in the development of the style of
Juan.
~
Although the Byronic heroes inherit some qualities
from Robert Burns's narrative and lyric poetry, they seem
to have inherited much from Byron's study of Burns's
personality, and after he has read some of the Scottish poet's
unpublished letters, Byron writes in his journal:
7JEdward Young, "Night Thoughts," as taken from En­
lightened England, Willie Sypher (ed.), pp. 590-601.
71~\{illie Sypher (ed.), Enlightened England, "Literary
Values," p. 25.
68
patterned after Hamlet.
Like Goethe and Rousseau, Byron
endows his heroes with the emotional responses of the heart
which overcomes their judgment and reason, and death often
seems the only solution to their woes.
Edward Youngts
melancholy persona who meditates among the tombs, relishing
his gloom in "Night Thoughts,,,7J begins what Willie Sypher
calls an "inverted sensibility" which leads to the Gothicism
of the late eighteenth century.74
Scott, Byron's friend
and contemporary, has immortalized the Gothic villain and
the ballad outlaw heroes in his narrative verse tales, and
Byron adapts both the style and characterizations to his
early heroes.
Alfieri is an Italian poet Byron admires for
his satires and tragedies, and Pope, as his master of
satire, has been discussed in preceding chapters.
Both
men are important in the development of the style of Q2n
Juan.
Although the Byronic heroes inherit some qualities
from Robert Burns's narrative and lyric poetry, they seem
to have inherited much from Byron's study of Burns's
personality, and after he has read some of the Scottish poet's
unpublished letters, Byron writes in his journal:
7JEdward Young, "Night Thoughts," as taken from En­
lightened England, Willie Sypher (ed.), pp. 590-601.
7h\o/illie Sypher (ed.), Enlightened England, "Literary
Values," p. 25.
69
• What an antithetical mind;--tenderness, roughness-­
delicacy, coarseness--sentiment, sensuality--soaring
and groveling--dirt and deity--all mixed up in that one
compound of clay • . .
75
This observation compares with Byron's portrayal of Napoleon
in Childe Harold, whose antithetical nature causes "the
fever at the core" l.,hich drives the Byronic hero forloJ'ard to
his destiny.
Byron's heroes live and struggle as fallen men in a
fallen world without hope or faith, and their negative re­
sponses to God, humanity, and sometimes to Nature reveal the
desolation of lives devoid of any creed or belief which
offers strength.
Childe Harold, the Giaour, Selim, Conrad,
Lara, and Manfred withdraw into isolation loneliness, re­
bellion, or proud disdain rather than face the imperfection
they see in the world, and their desperate efforts to survive
in a chaotic world of reality or in one of their own making
results in more desolation or death.
Childe Harold never
acquires the self-knowledge he seeks because he finds no
escape from himself in the unreality of the past scenes of
glory he visits in his travels, and he is a "ruin amidst
the ruins."
Neither does he find comfort in his investiga­
tion of heroism as he excuses his own fall by the failure of
Titan-like heroes, such as Napoleon, Rousseau, Voltaire,
and Gibbon, who have failed to benefit mankind in its quest
75Rowland E. Prothero (ed.), Letters and Journals, II,
(entry in journal), pp. 376-377.
70
for freedom.
His temporary union with Nature ends in a
selfish attempt to isolate himself from humanity, and his
failure to love mankind leads him to a life as a lonely
wanderer who lives out his life in passive reflections and
a longing for death; however, he does retain his love for
the wilder aspects of Nature, the stormy ocean or the
mountains, which reduce the majesty of man.
The Giaour, Selim, Conrad, and Lara escape in the
exotic islands of the East in the fallen world of Greece
where they rebel against society or individuals with a
motive of revenge, and they live out their lives in rage
against their human condition.
Although they hate tyranny
and love freedom, they are motivated by selfishness and
greed to establish themselves as Titanic leaders of outlaw
bands, oblivious to any laws or codes except their own.
As
men of action, the outlaw heroes dominate their followers and
the women who love them, and they become tyrants in their own
right.
Despite their deeds of murder, pillage, and conquest,
the outlaws have some feeling of sensibility, particularly
in their love of a woman, and this sensibility is their un­
doing.
As Bernard Blackstone explains: " . . . In the tales
we are in Nietzsche's world, not
~pinoza'sl
here power
1S
law, and the satisfaction of passion brushes every other con­
sideration aside . . . . ,,76
In love or war, the Byronic hero
76Bernard Blackstone, Byron Essay
p. 38.
X,
Lyric and Romance,
71
1S passionate, courageous, and vengeful, and he dies as he
has lived, asking no quarter from God or man.
Manfred, the most intense Byronic hero, has every
reason to take his place in cultivated society.
He is
wealthy, titled, and intellectual, but he chooses to isolate
himself from the herd of lesser men because he cannot tame
He has sought knowledge, both
down his superior nature.
worldly and other-worldly, but as Calvert says: " . • • His
is not the intellectual longing of Faust, to know all things
for the sake of knowing; he must know to still the serpent
in his own breast •
77
His powers of magic carry him
far beyond society's unforgiving attitude towards committing
the unpardonable sin of incest, so Manfred seeks oblivion
in other spheres of his own creation.
He refuses to yield
the power of his mind, and he finds no help.
Death releases
him from his unrelenting remorse, and he dies in full control
of his own mind.
In writing Manfred, Byron has found release
from his own tortured emotions, and he hopes to surV1ve
through his art.
Purged of the melancholy romantic hero-type in Manfred,
Byron is able to proceed from tragedy to comic humor in QQn
~.
Don Juan, thrown into the grim world of reality at the
age of sixteen, is scarcely prepared for experience in the
world as it 1S.
Particularly inexperienced in understanding
77William Calvert, Byron: Romantic Paradox, p. 142.
72
his sexual emotions, Don Juan is passive in love, but he is
a man of action in other adventures.
By the time he reaches
twenty-one, Don Juan is skillful in love, and he has tried
being a soldier, a Russian diplomat, and an English gentle­
man.
His versatile nature enables him, however, to live
contentedly, "In camps, in ships, in cottages, or courts,"
and he is, in short, "all things to all kinds of people."
He no longer has a conflict of heart and mind, as the two now
work together.
Don Juan, who sees the hypocrisy and cant
of English society through a foreigner's eyes, remains
sincere and unspoiled and responds to the world naturally.
Despite the flaws of character in the Byronic hero,
Byron caught the fancy of the reading public.
Bostetter
testifies to the popularity of Childe Harold and the Four
Turkish Tales, whose heroes live in a contemporary world,
and whose remorse, guilt, and disillusion relates to the
feelings of the English people who feel that they have be­
trayed the principles of the underlying reasons for the
French Revolution. 78
Although the historical facts and
places of Byron's poetry are far removed from the world
today, the present reader can draw parallels bet'...een the lost
generation of Byron's time and the lost generation of World
War I, written about by Hemingway.
Even the rise and fall
78E • E. Bostetter (ed.), Byron: Selected Poetry and
Letters, p. xiii.
j
1
:j
I
73
of a Hitler creates the same fascination for readers that
1
Napoleon's desire for conquest arouses.
The influence of the Byronic hero in literature has
been enormous, not only in Byron's time, but in the con­
tinuing years since his death in 1824.
Northrop Frye states
this premise succinctly when he writes:
• on the Continent Byron has been the arch-romantic
of modern literature, and European nineteenth-century
culture would be as unthinkable without Byron as its
history would be without Napoleon.
From the painting
of Delacroix to the music of Berlioz, the poetry of
Pushkin to the philosophy of Nietzsche, the spell of
Byron is ever~~here. Modern fiction would be miserably
impoverished without the Byronic hero I Balzac, Stendahl,
Dostoevsky have all used him in crucial roles . • • . 79
Authors in English literature, too, have used Byron's hero
as a source of characterization, Frye continues to saYI
An immense amount of imitation and use of Byron, con­
scious, or unconscious, direct or indirect, has taken
place in English literature, too, and nearly all of it
is of the Romantic Byron. Melville (whose Ishmael is
in the line of Cain), Conrad, Hemingway, A. E. Housman,
Thomas Wolfe, D. H. Lawrence, W. H. Auden--all of
these writers have little in common except that they all
Byronize .
80
Byron would have been proud to know that his hero
continues to be immortalized today, although he was not proud
of the sentimental, melancholy heroes he created.
Possibly
it is time for another Romantic Age in literature and another
Byron to cry out against tyranny in the world.
79Northrop Frye, Fables of Identity, p
80Ibid., p. 186.
186.
XHdVllDOI'lHIH
1
:~
,
1
!
j
~
I
j
1
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